Vehicles provided with electric motors and with batteries for powering the electric motors are becoming more and more popular. One reason is the ability to drive the vehicles without using combustion engines, thereby avoiding consumption of fossil fuels and emission of combustion gases.
Modern battery technology makes it possible to store enough energy on board a vehicle to drive it using only battery power, at least shorter distances. However, battery capacity is limited and cost is high and therefore infrastructure for charging the batteries should be readily available such that the vehicle can be charged at the convenience of the driver, for example outside a shopping mall, at a public car park or at work.
A major drawback for the prospective buyer of an electric vehicle is that there is no readily available infrastructure for charging electric vehicles. Hence, owning and operating an electric vehicle would potentially become very inconvenient.
Likewise, a major drawback exists for anyone thinking about deploying infrastructure for charging of electric vehicles since there is currently a very limited demand for such service, since barely any electric vehicles are in traffic today. A further drawback is that the installations are costly and typically require ground work, and that the demand for such service is very hard to predict. Also, there is a number of different technologies and voltages for charging electric vehicles and yet no well established standard.
Hence, pioneering companies and municipalities are left no other choice but to choose from these competing technologies and providers in order to offer electric charging to employees and inhabitants, any such choice being subject to the risk of the investing in a technology not demanded by tomorrow's drivers and to the risk of investing in too large or too small charging capacity.
Therefore, an improved infrastructure for electric vehicles would be advantageous in order to promote the occurrence of electric vehicles.
As background WO-A-2007/141543 could be mentioned. However, this known system does not offer a solution to the problems discussed above since the whole system is bound to a specific pole and a specific foundation. Furthermore the foundation member of WO-A-2007/141543 cannot be installed to prepare the street for later fitting of charging poles without severely obstructing pedestrians and traffic. Using the WO-A-2007/141543 arrangement both the foundation element and the charging pole need to be installed at the same time, leaving the owner with the said risks above.